oooOooo
*
Three stars in laurel wreath: Confederate General’s collar insignia.
Chapter 6
Due to the urgency of the situation neither Dusty nor Belle found time to sleep much on the night of Ludlow’s interrogation. They had their preparations to make for the journey. First they would ride to the nearest town on the Red River and there go by steamboat down to Alexandria, after which some way must be found by which they could reach New Orleans.
During the first stages of the journey, Dusty would travel in uniform. To avoid attracting too much attention, he elected to wear a jacket which followed the dictates of the Confederate States Army’s
Manual of Dress Regulations
, including the issue-type sword and pistol belt. His dress for New Orleans would be civilian clothing of a fairly nondescript kind; town suit, boots and hat. Nor could he take along his gunbelt and matched Army Colts as they would attract too much unwanted attention. That left him with the problem of selecting a suitable weapon for his needs. Texas born and raised, Dusty believed in a gun of .44 calibre as the only type on which a man might place complete reliability. Yet none of them were small enough for easy concealment. Finally he elected to take along one Army Colt. It would be carried in his waistband, hidden under his jacket and be readily accessible when needed. Of course he would be unable to draw with his usual speed, but reckoned to be fast enough when dealing with men unused to range-style gun-handling.
Belle too made her preparations for the assignment. It seemed highly unlikely that she would need her specially designed ball gown, so she decided to leave it behind until her return. Instead she would travel to Alexandria in an outfit suited to the part she intended to play; that of a well-to-do Southern lady on a journey. In addition she meant to take her male clothing, gunbelt and another of her special dresses, this time of a cheaper appearance and cut on the style a lady’s maid would wear. Using a capacious carpetbag as her one item of luggage, the girl packed in her spare clothing on top of the gunbelt and Dance. Already inside lay a jewellery case holding the ‘Borgia’ ring, her lens locket and various trinkets. The parasol, taken down into its two parts went in the bag, as did a purse heavy with Yankee gold and a spare wig. She left the materials for destruction of the counterfeiting plant to be supplied by the South’s agents in New Orleans.
So quickly did they work that on the night following the capture of Ludlow, Dusty and Belle boarded a riverboat and started upon the first and easiest leg of their journey.
While the boat carried him down the Red River, Dusty spent much of his waking time wondering what means they would use to reach New Orleans. In July the previous year, the Yankees finally took Vicksburg and gained control of the lower Mississippi River. On their last assignment Dusty and Belle avoided the problem that this posed by going along the Atchafalaya River to Morgan City, so by-passing the Big Muddy completely. Unfortunately they could hardly do so to reach New Orleans. Confederate armoured river-boats raided along the Mississippi, even slipping by the shore-batteries at Vicksburg and Baton Rouge to attack Yankee shipping on the lower reaches, but did not meet Dusty and Belle’s needs. Running the gauntlet of the Yankee heavy artillery, or the U.S. Navy’s efficient Mississippi Squadron would be too risky in a big river-boat when they had so much at stake. Of course they might take horses and pass along the fringe of the Yankee-held territory, then try to slip through to New Orleans over-land, but doing so was certain to take far too long to be of any use.
As the last major Confederate town on the Red before it joined the Mississippi, Alexandria lived in a constant state of readiness for war. On the down-stream side batteries of heavy-calibre cannon covered the water ready to repel any Yankee attack. Armoured vessels occupied most of the berths which before the War housed steamboats loaded with cotton and flatboats carrying produce of lesser importance down to the major cities along the country’s greatest waterway.
On her arrival, Belle presented her credentials to the relevant authorities. She left Dusty to be taken on a tour of the city’s defences while she saw various officials to arrange for their passage to New Orleans. Knowing something of Alexandria’s defences, the girl made a request and backed it with Ole Devil’s written orders that she be given every assistance. The General’s name packed enough weight to ensure compliance and he arranged for a different way of travelling to any that Dusty might have guessed.
Shortly after dark Belle and Dusty entered a closed carriage and drove through the town. The girl wore male clothing and Dusty dressed as a civilian. With a range-dweller’s sense of direction, Dusty guessed that they did not head for the main riverfront area. In fact they left Alexandria behind and went down-river. At last the carriage halted and they climbed down. Before them a narrow path wound off through a thickly wooded area. Standing in the centre of the path, a tall, slim, bearded young Confederate Navy lieutenant armed with sword and Navy Colt faced them.
“This’s Lieutenant Cord Pinckney, Dusty,” introduced Belle. “Cord, allow me to present Captain Dusty Fog.”
“Captain Fog,” greeted Pinckney. “Excuse the lack of formalities, but we’d best be moving.”
Without saying more, Pinckney led the way along the winding path. Water glinted through the trees, a large lagoon off the main flow of the Red. At the lagoon’s edge rested a kind of vessel Dusty had heard about but never before seen.
“A submersible,” he said. “So that’s how we’ll do it!”
“That’s just how we’re going to do it,” agreed the girl. “This is the Confederate Navy Ship
Jack the Giant-Killer
. Lieutenant Pinckney designed her himself specially for river work.”
Basically the
Jack
looked little different to the other David-class torpedo boat-rams which operated off Charleston and gave the blockading Yankees as much trouble as did Dusty’s Company in Arkansas. Fifty-four foot in length, she looked like a cigar with an oblong cockpit, funnel and torpedo-elevating spar rising from her deck. The torpedo itself, a copper container holding 100 pounds of gunpowder, rode submerged at the end of a fourteen foot hollow iron tube fitted to the bows, but could be raised to an operative position When needed. However the
Jack
rode higher in the water than the usual David which was ballasted down so hardly more than the cockpit showed above the surface.
Although smaller than any steamboat, the
Jack
still would show up on the river surface. Or so Dusty imagined as he looked at the little vessel. He was given no time to think of the matter. Already the
Jack’s
three-man crew stood by ready to leave. Smoke rose from the stack and the stoker tossed fuel on to the furnace, but its mouth had been masked so that none of the glow showed outside the hull.
“It’ll not be as comfortable as travelling in a riverboat,” Pinckney commented as his coxswain took the passengers’ bags and stowed them at the rear of the cockpit. “And I hadn’t counted on one of you being a lady.”
“Neither did my father when I was born,” Belle smiled. “He learned to live with it. I’m used to travelling rough, Mr. Pinckney.”
“It’ll be that,” Pinckney replied. ‘We’ll travel all night and as far as we dare during the day. It’ll be uncomfortable, dangerous and uncertain. I’ve my orders to deliver you to New Orleans and aim to make a try. But I feel it’s my duty to warn you of the dangers involved.”
“And we accept them,” Belle assured him. “Where do you want us to ride?”
Not that there would be much of a choice, the
Jack’s
sole accommodation being the tiny cockpit.
“Sit at the stern, the back end,” ordered Pinckney, translating for the benefit of folks he did not expect to understand nautical terms. “Once we’re under way, you can move about—as much as possible—unless we sight the enemy.”
“And if we do?” asked Dusty, wondering what the tiny vessel could hope to accomplish against even one of the small ‘tin-clad’ river gun-boats, so-called because of their very light armour plating.
“You’ll return to the stern, sit down and keep quiet,” Pinckney replied. “I hope it doesn’t come to that, though.”
With his passengers aboard, Pinckney ordered his men to cast off. Despite using a rear-screw, as opposed to the twin side-wheels of the riverboats, the
Jack
handled well and showed a surprising manoeuvrability. After being poled away from the shore, the little submersible gathered way and headed across the lagoon. Ahead lay a narrow gap barely wide enough for the boat, but Pinckney guided it through with little change of speed and once on the river headed down stream.
Clearly the
Jack’s
crew knew their work and went about it without needing orders. In addition to their cutlasses and Navy Colts, the men had two shotguns and a pair of Sharps carbines for armament.
“Which same stops us coming alongside and trading broadsides with any Yankee we meet,” Pinckney drawled as he saw Dusty studying his ship’s weapons. “Mind you though, apart from those Yankee steam-launches, there’s not a craft on the Big Muddy can catch the
Jack
running with the current and we’d give a launch a good run for its money.”
Even as Pinckney spoke, one of the crew men hauled on a cable which raised the torpedo spar from the water. Then the sailor swung over the cockpit and advanced along the deck to stand by the elevating spar. He looked down at the water intently, giving an occasional direction over his shoulder to the coxswain. On shore the shapes of the guardian batteries showed, gun crews on the alert but not challenging the little ship.
“We’re passing through the frame-torpedoes,” Belle breathed. “That’s why they raised the spar.”
Dusty did not need to ask why. Frame-torpedoes—the name ‘mine’ had not yet come into use—were copper or cast-iron shells filled with explosives, mounted on wooden frames firmly anchored to the river’s bottom. Fixed to come just below the surface, the shells carried percussion caps to be ignited when struck by an enemy vessel coming up-river. However it did not pay to knock or jolt the torpedoes from any angle and Pinckney took no chances.
Even the
Jack’s
crew members looked relieved when they had passed through the frame-torpedo maze. On went the little boat, its screw propeller making only a small sound instead of the thrashing thump a side-wheeler’s paddles gave out. With the current behind them and the engine turning the propellers steadily, they made a steady fifteen miles an hour.
Suddenly Dusty heard a gurgling sound and became aware that the
Jack
appeared to be settling deeper in the water. None of the crew showed the slightest concern, although the cox’n turned the wheel over to Pinckney and watched the river’s surface creeping higher. At last, with the water lapping at the very bottom of the cockpit, the gurgling stopped. Pinckney swung the wheel and the
Jack
moved across the river, turned back and resumed its course downstream. Nodding in satisfaction, Pinckney gave an order and the smallest member of his crew ducked out of sight under the deck. Turning over the wheel to his cox’n, Pinckney smiled at his passengers. It seemed that he noticed their agitation for the first time.
“I’ve just been ballasting her down,” he explained. “Run water into two tanks so that we lay lower and aren’t so easy to see. Most of the time we’ll be at normal level, but we’ll have to go down when we’re passing Yankee ships or batteries. When we’re by, we pump out the water and go on as before.”
“That’s smart thinking,” Dusty drawled, trying not to reveal that he had been worried.
“The
Hunley
was a better one,” Pinckney answered. “She’d got right under water. The crew stayed down for just over two and a half hours once.”
“If we could have found some way to power her, it would have made all the difference,” Belle remarked.
“It’ll come one of these days,” prophesised Pinckney.
Even in Arkansas word of the submarine
Hunley’s
exploits had been heard. Lacking engines, for steam could not be generated under water, the crew operated handles on a crank shaft to propel it through the water. After experimentation and some loss of life, the
Hunley
went down in a successful attempt to destroy the U.S.S.
Housatonic
.
While unable to submerge completely, the little
David
-class boats achieved greater success than the true submarine.
Despite the fact that the Red River remained in Confederate hands, one member of the tiny crew stayed on the look-out all the time. The U.S. Navy’s Mississippi Squadron sometimes sent raiding vessels off the main river and even a steam-launch’s crew submerged to cockpit level, crept by the Confederate batteries guarding the mouth of the Red and swung out on to the wide Mississippi.
“I never knew it was this big!” Dusty breathed as daylight gave him his first view of the main river.
“It’s even wider lower down,” the girl replied, then looked at Pinckney. “What do we do now?”
“Go on as far as we can, then find a place to lie up until nightfall,” he replied. “We have to pass the towns at night, the Yankees have garrisons in some of them.”
Dusty and Belle exchanged glances. All too well they realised the extreme urgency of their mission; and understood what such an extensive delay might cost the South. Yet there did not seem to be any way of slipping unseen by the Yankee garrisons along the river’s banks.
While thinking about the problem, Dusty glanced upstream and saw something bobbing in the current some way behind them. Even as he opened his mouth to give a warning, he realised the thing was a large tree either cut or torn down up-river and, having fallen in came floating down on the current. From the lack of interest in the sight shown by the
Jack’s
crew, Dusty concluded it must be a reasonably regular occurrence. Pinckney confirmed the view when Dusty put a question to him.
“Trees? Sure, you see plenty of them; bushes too. I’ve seen what looked like whole islands floating down-river at times.”